Queens of the Stone Age – July 20 2017 at Festival Hall, West Melbourne
First there was monkey. Then there was man. Then came Kokomo at a Queens of the Stone Age show. Kokomo not know science, and Kokomo not know women. But Kokomo side hustle is peer review of atypical animal behaviour within Western subcultures. And Kokomo know Queens Of The Stone Age provide ample meta data.
One wasted Olivieri lookalike kept bumping into all those within his orbit in the pre-show bar queue. Kokomo stood as much as he could before miming the ol’ fingers-across-the-throat gesture to the barmaids. To Kokomo’s delight, this lucky parolee was promptly cut off, roughed up and then ejected from the venue post haste. Another dedicated guy front and centre saw his opportunity to have a personal drum lesson from ex-Mars Volta drummer and handsome muscle man Jon Theodore. He had done his homework and played along 90% correctly, but the dude was no Stamos.
Queens of the Stone Age…
Kokomo was acutely aware he was out of his depth being at a heavy rock show. There was no three part harmonies, no talk-box solos and zero 12 string acoustics. Kokomo looked on astounded, and frantically scribbled notes on the antics of the daredevil over-30s. Like Kokomo they were on the lookout to reclaim something long lost. Unlike Kokomo, they had courage and weren’t total cowards. They’d enter the mosh with zero fear and call to their companions to join them in shared glory. Kokomo shed a Q shaped tear when a guy old enough to know better was carried over the security barrier towards the St John’s. Partly because it recalled a scene in his favourite inspirational movie The Bodyguard, and partly because Kokomo knew this guy had shelved his last pinger.
The band themselves sounded monstrous. Like their desert home the tunes swung from harsh and scary to psychedelic and triumphant. This typically depended on whether the song was from Songs For The Deaf or not. Good battled Evil, until Kokomo regained objectivity and savvied that the struggle exists only inside your own brain, man. As his union pager beeped on his belt and reminded him to take his allocated break, Kokomo found a secluded alley outdoors and relieved his built up tension. He then found he couldn’t get back inside, just as the opening riff for Song For The Dead began. Unperturbed, Kokomo had his own Wayne’s World headbanging party outside in the near freezing temperatures.
Wrapping Up…
The show almost over, Kokomo then wondered what would happen if you mixed his fragile bones with the imminent 2899 or so unsavoury criminal elements all vying for footpath space towards home. As the last note rang out, Kokomo didn’t wait around to find out. He pressed play on his 1970s soft rock compilation he bought off a late night infomercial – not too loud of course – and disappeared into the night.
XoXo – Kokomo